hang – Page 2 – A Smith of All Trades

Closet Doors

October 28, 2013 Jessica Smith

My hubby and my neighbor are amazing and surprised me by installing new closet doors in our office while my best friend and I were visiting my sister last weekend. Our house is all sorts of crooked, so they only installed one of the two doors while I was away because they wanted my opinion on how to solve the issue. I was so surprised by the one door — it was like Christmas.

Yes, a closet door was like Christmas! You see, we took down the bifold doors in our office months ago. Gosh, it might have even been close to a year ago. Then a few months ago we bought new closet doors to replace them. Except instead of bifolds, which I hate hate hate, they are now french doors. Saweeeet. BUT, we didn’t have the appropriate tools to hang them.

Here’s what the doors looked like when we moved in:

They were crooked on the tracks and were such a pain to open. We eventually got rid of them because on of the doors broke at the bottom and we couldn’t use it anymore.

Anywho, after asking me how I wanted to even out the doors to accommodate the crooked opening, the boys got back to it and quickly (or at least I thought so) finished hanging the doors. I would give you details on how they did it, but I was putting away massive loads of laundry and for once was happy to stay out of the way. Let’s just say there seemed to be lots of cuts made with a circular saw.

Can I just say that my neighbor is awesome!?! He brought his tools over and helped Brian with the install — twice! And once was at 8 a.m. And it wasn’t even his closet. That is a good friend!

And can I also just say that I love my man to pieces. He knew the unfinished closet was slowly (OK, maybe not that slowly) driving me mad. And he finished it to surprise me. AND my man decided that he doesn’t like knobs on his closet doors (who knew) so he opted for some large handles and it looks bangin’ good! I am doubly impressed.

Once the doors were up it was my turn to do some work on the closet, so I got to painting. We used Cascade White paint by Behr, which is the same white we used to paint the lower half of the office.

I love the french doors on the closet and eventually want to do this to all of our sliding closet doors as well. We’ll see if I get my way on that one.

They really do look so much better than the bifolds (and my Harry Potter collection looks nice, too!) and I am so thankful to have so many wonderful men in my life to help me out with projects like this.

Chad, you’re awesome. Brian, I love you. (And Benfer, thanks for supervising!)

Happy Monday! May your day be as great as mine was when I saw the first closet door hung up 🙂

Craft Projects

Driftwood and Sea Glass chime

July 31, 2013 Jessica Smith

My girlfriends and I got together for craft night last weekend, and, as always, we had a great time. Carrie came up with the idea to make driftwood and sea glass chimes (if you can call them that). After a delicious dinner and a bottle of wine, we began to tackle our craft.

We started with individual pieces of driftwood that Carrie collected on a family vacation. Apparently she was teased for collecting the wood — I think it was a fabulous idea, don’t you?

Once we picked which piece of wood we wanted, I got started on mine. Originally, I started to make mine with fishing wire. I got really frustrated with that, so I made mine with wire and chain. So to start my chime, I wrapped wire around each end of the driftwood and secured it around itself to create a hook to hang the finished chime from. Carrie and Amy used twine for this, and it worked great. It also looked really nice.

Like I said, I started mine with fishing wire. We watched a tutorial from Martha Stewart, and even she commented that the fishing wire was a pain. Clearly she, Carrie and Amy all have more patience than I do, because they made it work. I think the reason our wire wasn’t super easy to work with was because it was a bit thicker, so if you want to try this project on your own, I definitely recommend using a thin fishing line.

If you want to use fishing line, Carrie and Amy both did theirs differently. Carrie tied knots around each piece of sea glass and sealed the knot with super glue. Amy, on the other hand, avoided the knots and simply glued the wire to the glass with the super glue. She said one piece fell off at home, but it is holding up well.

Like I said, I got sick of the fishing wire and the knots, so I broke out the jewelry wire and chain. Sometimes working with a familiar material is just better.

After I created a handle to the driftwood, I lined the sea glass up in an ombre pattern. I ended up only using half of these, but you get the idea.

Then, I wrapped each piece of sea glass with wire, creating a loop at the top to attach it to the chain.

Once all of my glass was wrapped with wire, I attached each piece to one of my three chain strands. Then, to finish the chime, I attached the chain to the piece of driftwood using jewelry wire.

Sorry for the cruddy picture and the not-so-in-depth tutorial. It’s a girls’ night first and foremost, so blogging has to come second!

Anyway, here’s the finished product!

I love the colors of the glass, and now I want to go hunting for drift wood and real sea glass (these were from Michaels).

Have a great day!

Craft Projects

Key and Crystal Wind Chime

July 23, 2013July 22, 2013 Jessica Smith

As promised — new craft project!!!

Remember how I altered my aunt’s beautiful wind chime to match her preexisting one? That project inspired me to think out of the box to create her a final wind chime to complete her set. Both of her chimes are copper with key and crystal accents, and I happened to have a ton of old keys and chandelier crystals in my craft room. What luck!

I set out to make my own wind chime using keys, crystals, wire, chain and an embroidery hoop.

First, I separated my hoop into two pieces. I went outside and hit each side with some copper spray paint to match my aunt’s existing chimes.

Once the hoop was dry, I brought it inside and drilled six holes around the inner of the two hoops. This is where I attached the actual chimes, using the outer ring as a safety measure against the wire getting too much wear and tear.

When the holes were drilled, I started making each strand of the chime. I didn’t want my strands to be even, so I didn’t bother measuring out the chain. For this step, I laid out my supplies: pliers, wire, chain, keys, crystals.

I had two sizes of crystals from a leftover chandelier: Large drops and small faceted octagons. I used the large drops at the end of each chain to give them weight. For keys, I had a nice mixture to choose from. I opted to not be matchy-matchy. I spray painted a few copper, but left others natural.

To get the crystals onto the chain, I took a copper wire and looped it through the pre-drilled hole.

Once the wire was in and trimmed to a good length, I started to twist it around itself, creating a loop at the other end and hooking in the chain. Once the chain was hooked onto the wire, I came back down the wire, wrapping it around itself until the wire ran out.

After the anchor crystals were on, I continued this process up the chain. Crystal, key, crystal, key. I added more keys to some chains, and fewer to others.

Once the chains were created, I attached them to the embroidery hoop using the same method of twisting the wire. When all six chains were added, I added two chains at the top (using the existing holes) to hang the chime from.

{A Smith of All Trades} Crystals

Aren’t the crystals beautiful?!

And I just love the different keys that I added to the chime. They are all so unique.

The chime is so pretty, I almost don’t want to send it off to my aunt. But it will match so nicely.

What do you think? Will you be grabbing your space embroidery hoops and old chain to make a chime? You could make on using beads instead of crystals! Anything would go 🙂

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